Reference to Africans as subsistence farmers creates the impression that they had few commercial interests beyond the mealie patch and the cattle kraal. Yet there is abundant evidence of pre-colonial trade routes spanning the subcontinent. The driving forces were the unequal distribution of minerals in southern Africa and the desire for cattle among the metal-working peoples. A demand among the non-agricultural Khoisan for tobacco and dagga also led to a vigorous exchange of goods.
The Hurutshe and Kwena of the Rustenburg- Marico district mined iron and copper, which passed via the ‘Briqua’ or ‘goatpeople’ (the Tlhaping and Fokeng of the southern highveld) to the Khoi of the Orange River and Great Karoo, and thence to the metal-hungry Xhosa and Thembu of the Eastern Cape. From the northeast the iron and copper mines of Musina (Messina) (see Copper miners of Musina), Venda and Phalaborwa served the eastern Transvaal and trans-Limpopo region. The principal carriers of this trade were the Lemba and Tsonga of Delagoa Bay.
Along the Orange River, the exchange rates were as follows: a heifer was worth eight spears, an axe, an awl, a small bag of tobacco and a small bag of dagga, whereas an ox or a bull was worth only five spears, ‘plus all the other things as for a heifer’.
